Study Question (Human Sacrifice): How do I answer my Jewish friend about Yeshua's sacrifice.  She said that God did not want human sacrifice, that is what the pagans did, and we were to keep away from all pagan things. Even if He gave us His own life, it was then approved of by Hashem and that would be like endorsing it.  How do I answer her?

Toda Raba,
Elaine

Answer from Dr. John Garr, Ph.D. Restoration Foundation http://www.restorationfoundation.org

God foreshadowed the sacrifice of his Son Yeshua when he commanded Abraham to make a holocaust offering of his beloved son Isaac and then provided a ram as a substitution. The human race deserves to to consumed in the fires of hell; however, God has again provided a substitute, a vicarious atonement in the person of his Son Yeshua. This is not a human sacrifice, for it is a fulfillment of the promise that Abraham made to Isaac, "The Lord will provide himself a sacrifice." God provided himself, not a mere human being, as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. To have chosen a man to die for the sins of mankind would have been inhumane and ineffectual. To provide himself as a sacrifice was divine and efficacious. Again, it was not a man who died, it was God himself (who in his sovereignty had assumed to himself human flesh) who took upon himself all of mankind's sins and died to pay the penalty for those sins thereby liberating those who believe upon him to inherit eternal life. The only human sacrifice that God has ever wanted is the "living sacrifice" of every believer upon the altar of complete devotion to God.
John D. Garr, Ph.D.